Shakespeare Prize, 2013

Congratulations to Hamish Law, winner of the 2013 Willis Prize for Knowledge of Shakespeare and to Kezia Wright, who is awarded a Distinction and book token as runner-up. Shakespeare remains at the heart of our Department's work, and this annual prize recognises the importance we continue to give him, with his plays studied in the final five years of schooling here.

The candidates had to write an essay on what makes the plays memorable, and also address as an unseen poem Sonnet 57 to the 'fair youth'. The best entries dealt with the underlying anxiety of this memorable work:

Being your slave what should I do but tend
Upon the hours, and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend;
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world without end hour,
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour,
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are, how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love, that in your will,
Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.